Marines in Iraq: Ten years on

Camp Pendleton force key to invasion, Sunni Awakening in Anbar

Marine Lance Cpl. Daymond Geer, 21, who is manning machine gun mounted on top of the cab of a 7 ton truck, looks up at highway signs showing the way to Baghdad, Abu-Ghraib, and Fallujah as the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment roll up Highway 1 to Fallujah, Iraq on Tuesday, March 16, 2004. The Marines are heading to Forward Operating Base Volturno, just outside of Fallujah, where they will stay for the next seven months.
— Hayne Palmour IV

Marine Lance Cpl. Daymond Geer, 21, who is manning machine gun mounted on top of the cab of a 7 ton truck, looks up at highway signs showing the way to Baghdad, Abu-Ghraib, and Fallujah as the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment roll up Highway 1 to Fallujah, Iraq on Tuesday, March 16, 2004. The Marines are heading to Forward Operating Base Volturno, just outside of Fallujah, where they will stay for the next seven months.
— Hayne Palmour IV

In Anbar, Marines and soldiers under their command reached out to the tribes. They began providing better security through small combat outposts spread throughout Ramadi, seeping into the city block by block like an oil spot. Tribal leaders came to see the Americans as the lesser of two evils. They stopped attacking them and sent their sons to join the police and army.

Within a year violence dropped to the point where the mayor of Ramadi held a 5k race through streets once plagued by daily fire fights and bombings. The Sons of Iraq movement spread throughout Iraq, and together with a cease-fire by the Shiite Mahdi Militia, led to plummeting violence.

The change was stark when Sgt. Maj. Neil O’Connell returned to Anbar for a second year-long tour in 2008. The January 2009 provincial elections were virtually violence-free across Iraq. “I drove that province with my commanding general and we witnessed firsthand, free, open elections in hotbeds such as Fallujah, Ramadi, Al Qa’im,” said O’Connell, now retired and working in counter-IED equipment training for Saab Technologies.

One of the most remarkable aspects: “The Iraqis provided all the security,” O'Connell said.

The success of the Marines in Al Anbar predated the surge of extra troops and comprehensive population-centered counterinsurgency strategy Gen. David Petraeus applied in Iraq in spring 2007.

The fact that Marine-led forces in Anbar were well on their way to defeating insurgents in the once-violent west by that time was “the best-kept secret of the Iraq War,” according to a richly detailed book released this month by the Naval Institute Press: “The Marines Take Anbar: The Four-Year Fight Against Al Qaeda,” by Richard H. Shultz Jr., director of the International Security Studies Program at Tufts University.

FUTURE WARS

The Marines had arrived in Anbar in 2004 with a poor understanding of local tribal dynamics and the art of the deal — not surprising since a comprehensive study on the topic was not delivered to the Pentagon until summer 2006.

“We had to learn counterinsurgency and study it,” on-the-job, O’Connell said. “That type of campaign requires extensive training in terms of understanding the culture of an Iraqi village, for instance, and the history,” as well as the courage and flexibility to extend a hand one moment and fight the next.

Their hard-wrought knowledge later informed their fight in the Helmand province of Afghanistan. It was also written into military doctrine and training after Mattis and Petraeus oversaw publication of the first Army and Marine Corps field manual on counterinsurgency in decades. The project released as a government document in December 2006 is now being revised in light of recent history and a broader range of approaches.

The American public and most security analysts have no interest in another large-scale counterinsurgency war. But the U.S. military is trying to retain those skills even as it pumps up training in conventional tactics and amphibious operations that atrophied after 2001.

The Iraq War “matured the force in terms of our capability, outlook and education. Now the $64,000 question is — what’s the next war going to look like? Everybody gets that wrong. Nobody can see the future,” said McCoy, now vice president of Tampa-based Orbis Operations, an irregular warfare consulting firm.

As the Marine Corps demonstrated in Iraq, “It’s not like the only tool we have is a hammer. We have a whole tool bag.”

In this Oct. 26, 2004 file photo, U.S. Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment run to a building after detonating explosives to open a gate during a mission in Ramadi, Iraq. (AP Photo/Jim MacMillan, File)
— AP

In this Oct. 26, 2004 file photo, U.S. Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment run to a building after detonating explosives to open a gate during a mission in Ramadi, Iraq. (AP Photo/Jim MacMillan, File)
/ AP